Hell, Thy name is Whitefield

Once on a bright, sunny, jobless afternoon in my erstwhile place of vocation, a young boy filled with posthumous enthusiasm told me something that I'll never forget. With a look of betrayal in his eyes and defeat in his voice, he told me, "You know? When I attended this job interview in Delhi, They told me the office was located in Whitefield, Bangalore. Suddenly, this song started playing in my head, Fields of Gold. At that moment, I knew I had to be here. Do you know that song?" He asked me. I just nodded faintly remembering the Sting song was loaded in the wrong format in music player, the one that never played. "Anyway,", he continued, "I had a vision of this wonderful place with European facades and a lot of greenery. Do you know what I think now?" I knew. I had been thinking the same thing since I had landed there two whole years before he came. I looked at him, patted his back and asked him to kindly shut the fuck up and eat his lunch.

As human beings, we have this eternal urge to be stupid. We think we can do anything and we are heroes and things happen for a reason. I read somewhere that the reason most things happen is because we are so incorrigibly stupid. Imagine the catastrophe if this were true. Guess what, it is. Ask anyone who travels to Whitefield. Because, there is no reason on Earth that would compel a sane, "almost living" being to make this choice. And yet, we choose it. And we cry and cry and cry.

We cry a little when we look out into the vast expanse of the road. Except that it is not a road, but the rooftops of all the contraptions that were made to move. We just cry a little then. We cry some more when an overweight, insensitive buttock wants to make our right thigh its resting place. And then, slowly one little teardrop starts drifting from the left eye when the bus driver wants to play the latest melodious song that Uppi dada has danced to. Don't get me wrong. We are strong. We just cry a little when things like this happen. And some insufferable hours later, thanks to the one of the greatest revolutions of all times, the Earth's rotation, and Indian labor laws, we are "free" to go home. Only some of us, mind you. Anyway, with hope in our eyes and a sprint in our steps, we drag ourselves to the bus, and then...then, the same things that happened in the morning, they happen all over again with the addition of a throbbing headache.Still, we stay strong. Because we believe in Kelly Clarkson when she says what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, even though we know its killing us, a little. By the way, we play that song on our player, just to drown out Uppi dada's song. That's how the headache started in the first place. Both the songs, I mean.

And finally, we reach home. Almost at the same time when the earth is contemplating another rotation. We try to sleep and we have dreams, dreams that are a contrived combination of weekend movies and idle hallucinations, We dream of our Managers as Gabbars, and somewhere their faint spineless voices whispering.. "yaha se pachas pachas kos door Bangalore me jab Software Engineer raat ko rota hai to maa kahti hai beta soja ..soja nahi to subah ho jayega, phir se whitefield jana hoga" and thats when we cry a river, just like Justin Timberlake asked us to.

Oh you people, you laugh. You heartless, soulless people. You laugh like Mogambo whilst I sit here on my cushionless seat, and pushbackless headrest, massage my knee, and pretend to sleep.

Yours (Almost) Dead-ly,
A Sad Little Software Engineer

PS: This post is dedicated to my friend Priya. Even though she is not a software engineer, she is of the kind that pretends to protect them. What a joke, I tell her.
To my brother Karthik and his stomach that has increased its circumference by atleast 10 cm in the past year.
And also to all my friends, who cry with them.
And to me for, once upon a time I was one of them too.

Maybe things do happen for a reason? I mean, look at software engineers - They trouble their parents all through their childhood, trouble their teachers/neighbors all through their youth and expect life to be rosy and glamorous just because they got a software job??

I think, a software job chooses a person, as much as a person chooses a software job. It's natures way of reinstating the equilibrium in this (what software professionals consider as) inherently unequal world. K.A.R.M.A :P